of which they feel secure, are commonly very well cultivated; but those which they acquire by fraud, violence, or collusion, are not so, till, by long suffering and “hope deferred,” the old proprietors have been effectually crushed or driven out of the country.  The old proprietors of the lands so transferred to the tallookdars of the Gonda Baraetch districts from time to time had, under a series of weak governors, been so crushed or driven out before 1842, and their lands had, for the most part, been brought under good tillage.

The King of Oude, in a letter, dated the 31st of August 1823, tells the Resident, “that the villages and estates of the large refractory tallookdars are as flourishing and populous as they can possibly be; and there are many estates among them which yield more than two and three times the amount at which they have been assessed; and even if troops should be stationed there, to prevent the cultivation of the land till the balances are liquidated, the tallookdars immediately come forward to give battle; and, in spite of everything, cultivate the lands of their estates, so that their profits from the land are even greater than those of the Government.”  This picture is a very fair one, and as applicable to the state of Oude now as in 1823.

But if a weak man, by favour, fraud, or collusion, gets possession of a small estate, as he often does, the consequences are more serious than where the strong man gets it.  The ousted proprietors fight “to the death” to recover possession; and the new man forms a gang of the most atrocious ruffians he can collect, to defend his possession.  He cannot afford to pay them, and permits them to subsist on plunder.  In the contest the estate itself and many around it become waste, and the fellow who has usurped it, often—­nolens-volens—­becomes a systematic leader of banditti; and converts the deserted villages into strongholds and dens of robbers.  I shall have occasion to describe many instances of this kind as I proceed in my Diary.

Dursung Sing was strong both in troops and Court favour, and he systematically plundered and kept down the great landholders throughout the districts under his charge, but protected the cultivators, and even the smaller land proprietors, whose estates could not be conveniently added to his own.  When the Court found the barons in any district grow refractory, under weak governors, they gave the contract of it to Dursun Sing, as the only officer who could plunder and reduce them to order.  During the short time that he held the districts of Gonda and Bahraetch in 1836, he did little mischief.  He merely ascertained the character and substance of the great landholders, exacted from the weaker all that they could pay, and “bided his time.”  When he resumed the charge in 1842, the greater landholders had become strong and substantial; and he was commanded by the Durbar to coerce and make them pay all the arrears of revenue due, or pretended to be due, by them.